Pathways for adaptive and integrated disaster resilience

Abstract

The world is experiencing more frequent, deadly and costly disasters. Disasters are increasingly uncertain and complex due to rapid environmental and socio-economic changes occurring at multiple scales. Understanding the causes and impacts of disasters requires comprehensive, systematic and multi-disciplinary analysis. This paper introduces recent multidisciplinary work on resilience, disaster risk reduction (DRR), climate change adaptation (CCA) and adaptive governance and then proposes a new and innovative framework for adaptive and integrated disaster resilience (AIDR). AIDR is defined as the ability of nations and communities to build resilience in an integrated manner and strengthen mechanisms to build system adaptiveness. AIDR provides the ability to face complexities and uncertainties by designing institutional processes that function across sectors and scales, to engage multiple stakeholders and to promote social learning. Based on the review of existing academic and non-academic literature, we identify seven pathways to achieve AIDR. These pathways are a conceptual tool to support scholars, policy makers and practitioners to better integrate existing DRR strategies with CCA and more general development concerns. They describe institutional strategies that are aimed at dealing with complexities and uncertainties by integrating DRR, CCA and development; strengthening polycentric governance; fostering collaborations; improving knowledge and information; enabling institutional learning; self-organisation and networking; and provision of disaster risk finance and insurance. We also examine the implications of these pathways for Indonesia, one of the most vulnerable countries to natural hazards and climate change impacts. Our findings suggest that there is an urgent need to commit more resources to and strengthen multi-stakeholder collaboration at the local level. We also argue for placing the community at the centre of an integrated and adaptive approach to DRR and CCA.

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Acknowledgments

The first author is an Indonesian PhD student supported by the Australia Development Scholarship and top-up scholarship from CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship. She also works for the local government of Kendari City, Indonesia. The co-authors are the first authors’ PhD supervisors. She is indebted to her discussions on integrated risk and disaster governance with Peijun Shi, Ortwin Renn, Nicholas Pidgeon, David Alexander, Guoyi Han and Roger Kasperson in the 2011 Summer Institute for Advance Study of Disaster and Risk of Beijing Normal University, China. Earlier version of the AIDR framework was presented during the Brown Institute of Advance Research Study, USA, 2012, where the first author discussed adaptive governance with Ronald Brunner and Amanda Lynch. An earlier discussion on the pathways for AIDR was presented at the UNU-WIDER Conference on Climate and Development in Helsinki, 2012.

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